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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27488959">Landing</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serenhawk/pseuds/Serenhawk'>Serenhawk</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Cockles in the Wild [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Bleed, Dom/sub Undertones, Episode 15x18, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Pillow Talk, The plane incident, VegasCon 2020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:14:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,300</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27488959</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serenhawk/pseuds/Serenhawk</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Finding your feet on the ground after a near-death experience during the swell of a pandemic isn't easy.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jensen Ackles/Danneel Harris, Jensen Ackles/Misha Collins, Misha Collins/Vicki Vantoch</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Cockles in the Wild [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/371696</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>122</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Landing</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I began this back in March when we first found out Jared's plane carrying Misha, Jensen, Rich and Alex had lost an engine and returned to Vancouver, right after they'd shot the scene we suspected involved Cas's goodbye, and the full threat of Covid was just being realized.<br/>Now, after seeing the episode, I picked it up again, with new details from Misha as a delightful bonus.<br/>I allude to several headcanons I have without delving too deeply, leaving you to fill in the gaps. However, if anything pings, hit me up in the comments or DMs at @serenhawk_fic for further discussion and battery.</p><p>Thanks to Shellz for the beta &lt;3</p><p>This is a work of fiction. No disrespect is intended to those whose names are used.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>For a Friend</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Misha wakes, the obnoxious snarl of a modified engine receding into the distance. His consciousness swirls, drawing itself together enough to mentally scold the offending driver until it clicks over the next cog to recognize he shouldn’t be hearing any traffic at all. Opening his eyes, they blink and finally focus in the dawn light to see the space beside him is vacant.</p><p>Twisting to his right, he instinctively checks the time on his phone to get his bearings; 6:42<br/>
<em>Fuck</em>. He’d only been asleep an hour, ninety minutes at best. His body makes sure he’s doubly aware as he crunches to sit, every muscle in unison making him feel all of his 45 years and more as they resist the order to rise, fumble for a discarded tee, and walk out to the living area to find the balcony door open.</p><p>Slipping past the heavy glass he finds the real culprit surveying the city streets below, the fuchsia blush from the Vancouver lights making him eerily pale. Beside the wicker lounger sits is a half-filled bottle and a glass tumbler, both ominously depleted but for a few shards of ice. His washed hair looks almost comically startled, reaching in every direction.</p><p>“Couldn’t sleep?” Misha asks, stating the obvious in a rasp that has him coarsely clearing his throat.</p><p>Jensen barely acknowledges him, shrugging, then hunches further into the throw he's pulled around himself. Misha’s senses go on alert. Something is wrong.</p><p>Down on the street, a car horn blares before being answered by another making Misha jump and yeah, he's still on edge too.</p><p>“Save any for me?” he tries again, taking the neighboring chair and suppressing a shiver. He can feel his toes already smarting in the chill.</p><p>His companion finally glances over. “I woulda’ drank it all if it made any difference,” he suggests, a wry note finding its way into the flat tone and easing Misha’s concern just a touch. “I need some fuckin’ weed.”</p><p>“You don't have any?” Misha asks, then kicks himself thoroughly for his propensity for making ridiculously obvious observations when he’s scrambling for conversation. Odd how you can spend ten years periodically working and sleeping next to someone and still have times where you don’t know what to say, he thinks.</p><p>“I'm out.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Misha acknowledges uselessly, his brain inexplicably choosing the moment to punch him into an onslaught of memories reliving the past 24 hours; arriving at work already sporting a sleep deficit and anxious about the day ahead, Jensen getting five stanzas into the final script before he was gulping down air to suffocate the grief that had taken him by surprise, the walk back to Jensen’s trailer they’d shared after a night executing the scene—that scene—which they knew was going to cleave them in a myriad of little ways but which hollowed him out even more than he was prepared for. Then there was the scramble to the airport before the incident with the plane, the euphoria of stepping out onto solid ground amidst a gathered audience of emergency trucks only to have to wait on shaky legs while alternate flights were scheduled, and finally cutting their losses to return home with nerves still frayed to pieces.</p><p>They’d barely undressed to blunder into bed, collapsing, depleted from the adrenalin crash while knowing they'd only get a brief respite. Then they would have to steel themselves to board another flight in order to headline the weekend convention, both in revolt of their renewed sense of self-preservation. Jensen hadn’t asked him to stick by his side since the ride back downtown, trusting that Misha had read the implied request in his tense green gaze and constant brush of knuckles, before cutting the pressure in the elevator with a joke about how they were too old and too tired even for <em>thank God we’re alive</em> sex.</p><p> </p><p>He shakes free of the unwanted flashbacks and focuses on the crown of hair poking out of the blanket. “Want me to go back to my room?” Misha offers tentatively. He knows he can be a restless sleeper of late, especially when his hip aches. It was one of a handful of reasons he keeps a casual space of his own there for when he's working, although he's never not been able to think of it as Jensen's apartment.</p><p>Jensen answers with a sharp “No,” which makes Misha regret the question. “Unless, you want. You gotta work today, I don’t.” Jensen extends, his tone softening.</p><p>Misha takes a breath deep into his chest. “I’d rather be with you,” he returns.</p><p>Saying nothing, Jensen retrieves an arm from his cocoon to reach for Misha’s hand, weaving their fingers together and issuing a reassuring squeeze. “Shit, you’re freezing,” he notes, and Misha is, the hairs along his arm standing up in protest. “Go back to bed,” Jensen orders gruffly.</p><p>“Not without you.”</p><p>The irresistible force paradox flashes in their stares. “Fine,” Jensen grumps in surrender, thrashing around under the blue blanket to stand.</p><p>Once inside, the city firmly excluded this time with the drapes drawn, Misha waits, thawing under the lush bedcovers while Jensen detours to the bathroom, finally landing in bed with a <em>whump.</em> Swishing the covers in place, his friend fidgets like the very idea of sleeping irritates him.</p><p>Misha takes in the rigid line of his jaw in the slim light and risks another foray. “Want to talk about it?”</p><p>Glancing over, Jensen meets his gaze and lingers, his own turning to liquid then settling on Misha’s mouth. “I just need to get out of my head for a bit,” he says, and Misha catches his drift, the seductive note faint but distinct enough to hum in his ears. And elsewhere.</p><p>But it isn’t strong enough to override the fact Misha has barely slept and remains a fragile, turbulent mess himself, and that it's seven in the morning and he soon has to get up, face travel again, and then be rushed into being Misha Collins all afternoon to meet the expectations of hundreds. There is no way he’d trust himself to dom in any sense right now, let alone without more clarity on Jensen’s state of mind. It stings, because Jensen has been around to help pull him out of his various and frequent funks for much of the past year, and now when it’s his turn Misha can’t comply.</p><p>He isn’t so exhausted he couldn’t tell the difference between wants and needs, however, and he's not convinced Jensen getting outside of himself is what he currently needs. Nonetheless, Misha curls onto his side and levers close enough to mold one palm to Jensen’s rump and the other under the bolt of his jaw, securing him to drift his mouth along the familiar, prominent cheekbone. Responsive as always, Jensen surges gently into the touch, his soft exhale gusting past Misha’s ear. They move together, lips grazing lips and skin, lazy dry kisses that don’t go anywhere while their hands remind them that their bodies are still there, still solid and constant even as they begin to yield.</p><p>“Let’s not go,” Jensen murmurs.</p><p>Misha halts, forehead wrinkling against Jensen’s cheek.</p><p>“Let’s just not go,” Jensen repeats, his whisper thinning with urgency.</p><p>Pulling back, he pauses until Jensen’s eyes blink open, then lets out a confused huff. “We can’t—”</p><p>”’m serious.” Jensen interrupts. “Fuck it. I don’t wanna go. And I don’t want you to go either.”</p><p>Misha can feel his frown deepen. “What?”</p><p>“I don’t wanna get on a plane today—maybe ever again. And there’s gonna be people, many people, and you know you’re still gonna hug half of ‘em—”</p><p>“Jensen.” Misha takes a turn to cut him off, though he’s not sure what to follow with, still perplexed at where this was coming from. Jensen simply waits, pupils darting under his stare. The aircon kicks in with a low hum, underlining the silence. “You’re safe,” he finally settles on.</p><p>Jensen’s frame minutely sags. “Show me,” he whispers again, then waits for Misha’s counter, which is as predictable as it is instantaneous.</p><p>Throwing his weight, he rolls Jensen onto his back with precision, moving with him. Finding one first one of Jensen’s hands then the other, he loosely pin both wrists over his head, stretching them both out before sealing their mouths. The answering moan deep in Jensen’s throat spurs him on, paring lips apart with his tongue and dropping his elbows and hips, blanketing his friend with his full heft and messily mapping his mouth. In the cage of Misha’s body, Jensen falls limp, barely answering the kiss. It’s enough to break Misha out, even though he knows it’s exactly what Jensen hoped to feel.</p><p>“Mish,” he murmurs against Misha’s slackening mouth. “Please,” he tries again, stressing his plea with a lick of Misha’s bottom lip. Misha issues a peck in return, then another before releasing Jensen’s hands and repositioning off-center. He’s shattered, feeling in every cell he can’t give Jensen what he wants, nor should he. Taking a moment, he rests his gaze on Jensen’s profile, eyes clamped shut. Against his thigh, he can feel Jensen is half hard, but he’s the only one of the two of them.</p><p>Watching Jensen’s lashes quiver against his cheek, another parade of reminders burst through his subconscious. The way his voice betrayed him on set as he watched Dean’s throat bob through Castiel's copious goodbye tears, the look Jensen threw him as they approached the runway after the engine blew, the way his hands shook as he sent a message to Vic on the descent. His stomach somersaults like he’s suddenly back in the fuselage.</p><p>Misha blinks, trying furiously to clear everything away and subsequently misses Jensen launching one last, albeit docile, appeal. “Sweetheart,” Misha stalls hoarsely, sliding his mouth away. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>But Jensen doesn’t immediately release him, maintaining the hold of the fingers he’d curled under Misha’s ear. “So am I,” he mumbles, but Misha can feel the hint of a smile around the words, though it’s gone again by the time his eyes focus back on the face in front of him.</p><p>Leaving a cool swipe across Misha’s cheek with his thumb, Jensen eases on to his back with a sullen wriggle of his shoulders. “Can this day ever end? Yesterday. Whatever. How many hours we got?”</p><p>Checking his phone again, Misha shuffles to his back to mirror him, limbs feeling dead-weight. “Couple.”</p><p>“Fuck."</p><p>"What is time, anymore?" he mulls.</p><p> </p><p>Closing his eyes, Misha focuses on drawing air deep down to his diaphragm, mentally charting a slow course through his extremities to single out each tendon and muscle to suggest, one by one, that they relax and let go of whatever strain they hold on to. The air turns off again, leaving only the drags of his breath to the count of five as he wanders his body. He makes it to his solar plexus before Jensen’s voice low interrupts.</p><p>“We didn’t really get a chance to come down last night.” Misha casts a slitted glance to the side to see Jensen staring pensively back, palms nestled under his right cheek. “I was proud of you. Scared of you, even. You were good. Better than good.”</p><p>A smile slants his mouth, unbidden. The hug they’d shared in Jensen’s trailer after they’d wrapped told him as much, wary even as it was long. The kind of hug where you have to hold a piece of yourself back lest you never see it again. But it was different to hear those words straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were. They’d needed that hasty double whiskey shot afterward.</p><p>“Scared?” he quizzes.</p><p>Eyes offering nothing, Jensen’s mouth seems to try several answers before one makes it out. “It was a lot,” he says, unhelpful.</p><p>“Cas did come out to you,” Misha responds facetiously, mostly to hide a second welling of grief overtaking his chest. Residue from the night before, from their past, and for how their future will change.</p><p>His weak attempt at diversion, however, falls flat. “It wasn’t all Cas, was it,” Jensen remarks. “It was you. On camera.”</p><p>“You’re still afraid of that?” he challenges, confusion overtaken by a flash of mild irritation despite how committed he was to privacy - more so than the man beside him. But Jensen’s darkening face doesn’t try to conceal his displeasure. “Sorry,” Misha issues preemptively, sensing how close they could be to veering off course from out of nowhere. He can’t remember when Jensen had last been this prickly.</p><p>“You know I don’t give a shit about us.”</p><p>Wincing, he scrutinizes warily as Jensen shifts and scrubs both hands testily over his face. “Fuck. Sorry, I didn—you know what I mean.” His friend inhales, shallow and shuddering, then blurts, “I’m drowning here, Mish. Everything is bleeding together.”</p><p>Watching carefully, Misha considers how to respond. “What do you need?” he eventually queries.</p><p>Jensen takes a long moment to answer, throat once again faltering. Watery light from the premature morning outside creeps steadily in through the cracks in the drapes to inch stripes up the wall. “In the last twelve hours, my body has been through losing you once, then nearly losing you again, for real. And Dee. An’ today we have to get on a flight full of people to go to a convention full of people where you...where we are gonna be exposed to this...this virus and God knows what else, and I— all I wanna do is go home.”</p><p>Misha swallows, finally comprehending how many of Jensen’s buttons have been pushed.</p><p>But this is unquestionably not the time nor place to tackle how hard Jensen works to keep everything in neat compartments head-on, even though his control issues were, frankly, a pain in his ass right now. There were times Jensen’s complex relationship with control worked in Misha’s favor, though his part was as much a gift to his lover as pleasure taken for himself. But, submitting is only ever giving up control in a specific context, which isn’t really giving up at all. He’d witnessed Jensen loosen a lot over the last decade, giving into the trade winds in his life as much as harnessing them, but when it came to perceiving peril for those he loves, he was still capable of regressing.</p><p>The opportunity for counting himself among that number does not pass Misha by. It also vitalizes him.</p><p>Rolling to meet Jensen in the middle of the bed, he plants a kiss on his forehead and gathers his friend in, Jensen not needing much encouragement to burrow into his neck. Misha tries to tell him with the lines of his body that he feels loved by him, convinces him with fingertips skimming the thin cotton covering Jensen’s back that he doesn’t and never has needed his protection. He lets his lips, brushing the delicate shell of Jensen’s ear, assure him that he isn’t going anywhere, because working may have brought them together but distance was not a tyranny they’d allow to keep them apart. He may have spent months dreading this time of goodbyes—and there were a lot of them to be said—but there was not one reserved for Jensen and himself.</p><p>In return, he begins to feel the tension seep gradually from Jensen’s frame, the palms anchored to his back softening their grip. Until his phone buzzes.</p><p>“You gonna get that?” Jensen asks in a noticeably sleepier muffle.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>His phone alerts him to the arrival of a second text, and he sighs. “Probably Vee checking you’re actually alive,” Jensen supplies, which was a fair point.</p><p>Reluctantly untangling his torso, Misha stretches to pull his phone from the charging port and opens the screen, frowns, then smiles at what he reads, cheeks pulling wider as his metamour’s fond and grateful words prompted by their overnight adventure permeate.</p><p>“What?</p><p>He casts a glance at Jensen, looking at him with concern nonetheless.</p><p>“Danneel wants to know if I think you’re okay,” he offers, which was true of the first, and shorter missive.</p><p>“Ah.”</p><p>He arches his brow. “Ah?”</p><p>Jensen nibbles at his bottom lip for a second. “Probably ‘cause I wrote her love letter at 5:30 am.”</p><p>“Ahh.” Misha scrolls a little further. “Well I don’t know what you said to make her write <em>me</em> one in return, but I appreciate it,” he adds.</p><p>“What?” Jensen repeats, perking up, his head lifting off the pillow. “Lemme see?”</p><p>“No!”</p><p>“No?”</p><p>“No,” Misha insists. “It’s private.” For once, it actually is.</p><p>“It’s private,” Jensen repeats, managing to be mocking while exhibiting an impressive pout. “Don’t remember that part of the deal when I signed on.”</p><p>Then he makes a half-hearted lunge for the phone, Misha only just managing to drop it gently on the carpet and out of Jensen’s reach in time. “What part of the deal?” Misha invites playfully following Jensen’s lead, who takes advantage of his looming position to plaster himself to Misha’s front.</p><p>“The part where my wife adores you,” Jensen responds, then kisses him. “And sends you secret messages.” Another kiss. Then another.</p><p>Prudent at first, Misha tentatively gives in, parting his lips while finding the warm band of exposed skin at Jensen’s waist. “How did you know?” he prompts, before mouthing at the crease at the corner, over the hidden dimple.</p><p>“You think I don’t know both of you by now?” comes the affronted reply softened by fatigue, to which Misha has to silently concede.</p><p>Speculative touches give way to more demanding ones, the conversation evaporating as they idly chip away at each other’s expended defenses. Fingertips tracing the rise of Jensen’s hip, Misha isn’t surprised when Jensen pushes close, issuing an experimental rut. Wedging a palm between them, he gauges Jensen’s arousal and proceeds to work him, sluggishly at first, then with more determination, popping him over the elastic confines of his underwear. With a brief pause to gather, with foresight, a cloth from the bedside along with a squirt of lube—not because he’s a gentleman (he fucking is) but because he implicitly understands that first and foremost Jensen needs comfort ahead of grounding right now—it isn’t long before his friend is sighing pleas of <em>please Mish</em> and <em>make me</em> against Misha’s lips, his earlobe, his heated neck. With a strategically timed nip into the meat of Jensen’s shoulder, Misha plucks him over the edge and into space, then lures him back down with slow, sweeping caresses over any bare skin he can find amid the rumples of his tee and skewed briefs, punctuating his care with light presses of lips to the face he’s seen awash with torment and worry too often in the last day.</p><p>After a perfunctory wipe dry, and a tender assurance that<em> no, I can wait until next time</em>, Jensen ends up listlessly pillowed sideways, on Misha’s chest. He cards fingers through the short hair above Jensen’s nape and muses how his friend hasn’t lain like this, childlike, in a long time. Not regularly since they were first together, in fact, back before they really had any idea what they had or where it would lead them. Before they fell apart, then glued themselves back together like a piece of kintsugi. Before they realized they’d woven themselves into each other’s lives, single contrasting threads that didn’t seem to fit until you stood back and looked at the whole tapestry.</p><p>He assumes Jensen has fallen asleep until he feels him sifting some of the sparse, dark hairs sprinkled over his heart between a thumb and forefinger.</p><p>“I want to be home,” Jensen says listlessly, so hushed Misha almost doesn’t catch it. “But you’re my home too. You know that.”</p><p>And he does.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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